The Calhoun Chronicles Bundle: The Charm School. Сьюзен Виггс
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Isadora helped herself to the cotton bib apron hanging on a wall hook and got to work. During the last years of Aunt Button’s life, she had taken charge of nursing her, and the experience of caring for another human being gratified her. Willingly, she embraced the task.
She emptied the chamber pot and aired the bedclothes. She dispensed sponge baths, helped the women put on clean nightgowns and removed the others to launder them. She worked with fierce purpose, grateful for the activity. If she let herself be idle for even a few moments, she would burst with fury at Ryan Calhoun. At least the labor gave her some outlet for the angry energy coursing through her.
Holding the basket of clothes and linens in front of her, she tapped her foot on the galley floor. The Doctor glanced up. “Aye, miss, what can I do for you?”
“I should like a vat of hot water and some lye soap for washing. Please.”
He considered this a moment. Then he nodded. “I’ll put a kettle on—but it’s sea water, you understand. We don’t use the fresh for laundry.”
“I understand.” Within moments she was kneeling on deck, her sleeves rolled up and her elbows sticking out as she vigorously scrubbed the garments up and down a ridged washboard. She had never once in her life done laundry, and the task proved harder than it looked. The water kept sloshing all over her lap. She splashed herself in the face, and her eyes stung from the soap. As usual, her hair wouldn’t stay in its knot, and long strands fell forward to dip into the vat. By the time she finished, she was nearly as wet as the clothes.
Yet oddly, she wasn’t concerned with her appearance. Back in Boston, someone was always correcting her posture, tidying her hair, evening out the drape of her dress. The men of the Swan did not seem to care in the least what she wore or what her hair looked like. It was quite liberating and, she supposed, quite wicked, to enjoy such an unconventional attitude.
With an exaggerated swagger, Ryan Calhoun strolled near, exquisitely dressed in popinjay attire, for earlier in the day they had hailed a British frigate. He insisted that a skipper must look prosperous to be perceived as a worthy merchant. Isadora suspected he merely liked to dress in fancy attire because he was vain.
Still, he had done some trading—Ipswich cotton for Glasgow wool—and made a nice profit. To the disgusting hilarity of the men, Ryan had offered to throw in Isadora for free.
She studied him furtively now, this man who seemed determined to make her regret this voyage. A froth of Irish lace adorned his neck, spilling out over a peacock blue waistcoat of figured silk. His expertly creased trousers were tucked into boots that gleamed with fresh polish.
Criminal, she thought resentfully. It was criminal that a man should look so comely in the middle of the ocean. Only Ryan Calhoun could wear such loud colors and make them seem brighter and richer. What a vain and self-centered man he was, to look so fine when she looked so…damp.
He lingered on the deck and watched her until she said, “Haven’t you anything better to do? Perhaps someone has a pocket watch or some books or other valuables that need to be pitched overboard.”
He chuckled. It infuriated her that he had such a charming laugh. She wished his laughter could sound as obnoxious as he truly was.
“I’m intrigued, Miss Peabody. Isn’t that Fayette’s calico dress?”
“It is. She and your mother are unwell. I have decided to look after them.”
“Why?”
“To keep myself from killing you,” she said between her teeth, increasing her vigor with the washboard.
“Ah. Still vexed about the spectacles?” He lifted one eyebrow, just so. “Good. Think about that next time you decide to record my misdeeds aboard the ship.”
“You should not have jettisoned my eyeglasses.” Isadora would not admit, on pain of death, that she did not miss the eyeglasses at all. Wearing them had been a great bother. They had never worked properly. She was always having to find a way to peer over or under the lenses. Without them, she could see much better.
A fact she refused to divulge to Ryan Calhoun.
“That is one thing you must learn about me, Miss Peabody,” he said. “I am a creature of impulse. I almost never think before I act.”
“An impressive quality, I’m sure.” She could not begin to explain how offensive his action had been. Regardless of whether they worked or not, the spectacles belonged to her. They were personal, perhaps as much a part as her brown hair and hazel eyes. She felt naked without them. They were a symbol of her identity, and he had taken that away.
An unwanted inner voice told her she used to hide behind them. She hushed the inner voice. It was not up to Ryan Calhoun to drag her out of hiding.
She lifted the heavy lump of sodden fabric out of the tub and slapped it on the deck. Picking up the tub, she staggered toward the rail to empty it. The weight of it unbalanced her, and she lurched forward. The tub sloshed over, a fount of gray wash water exploding upward and drenching Ryan Calhoun from head to toe.
His stylishly cut red hair. His exquisite lace neck cloth. His silken turquoise waistcoat. His creased trousers and gleaming boots.
Isadora stood back, blinking and aghast. Then a satisfying sense of justice settled over her. “Oops,” she said.
She expected fury from him, but he surprised her. He threw back his head and roared with laughter.
What a singular way to cope with a humiliating mishap, she thought, puzzled by his mirth. She studied his tanned, wet throat and curling long hair and strong white teeth and dancing eyes. He was so quick to laugh at his own expense.
“Touché, Miss Peabody. Touché.”
“The pleasure was mine, I’m sure,” she said. She had the most inexplicable urge to smile at him. Determinedly she kept her face blank, her mouth grim.
He whistled as he strolled down the deck, water squishing from his boots. Isadora stared after him, intrigued. The seamen on duty stared, too, elbowing each other and whispering.
Papa had warned her that travel by sailing ship meant days of tedium.
Papa, for the first time in his life, was wrong.
One morning at sunrise, after the changing of the watch, Ryan was walking the starboard rail when he came across the sail maker crouched on deck with Isadora.
Despite living in tiny quarters with a minimum of amenities, she clung to her lubberly fashion of wearing a tightly bound gray or black dress, a bonnet and that idiotic knotted coiffure. Yet the wind, far more persistent even than Isadora’s stubbornness, plucked long strands of hair from her bonnet and swirled them in the sun until the exposure made her hair glisten with gold highlights.
Between Luigi and Isadora lay a pile of ropes and pulleys. “This,” the sail maker said, holding it out to her, “is a heaving line. You throw it with a monkey’s fist, like so.” He demonstrated. Then Isadora took a turn with it, beaming when she succeeded.
“And this one?” She held up a decorated knot.
“A cat’s-paw. And this one, see, it’s got a knot to hold a line on a gangway, this is a Turk’s head.”
She took up the next one. “What do you call this back splice?”
“A dog’s cock,” Luigi said matter-of-factly.
Miss Isadora dropped it as if it had burned her. “Ye powers.”
Laughing to himself, Ryan approached them. “A lesson in your sea-going jargon?” he inquired.
Luigi winked, twitching his mustache. “The lady, she is a fast learner.”
“Then perhaps one day you’ll tell her how we refer to heaving in a line a bit.”
She stood up. “And what would the answer to that one be?”
“If the back